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Why I won't be upgrading to Bibleworks 8 (not for $100+ anyway)

Bibleworks, I want you to know that you lost my trust with Bibleworks 7. It's going to take more than "New Features, New Databases, and New Version!" to win it back. It's going to take a whole new approach to usability and quality control.

Regarding usability, I have just this advice. Play with Accordance. Find out why people love it. Emulate. Keep your crazy command-line based interface for users who like it, but offer something easier and sweeter on top. Oh, and by the way, if I delete the logic operator at the beginning of the line, don't put up a modal dialog box asking me what I want to do. If you don't know why that's bad interface design, welcome to the 1990's.

Regarding quality control, I offer one exhibit. Open up any biblical text in Bibleworks—English, Greek, Hebrew, doesn't matter. Place the mouse cursor just to the left of a character. Click the mouse button. Drag the mouse to the right. In every other program in the universe, this will select that character and all the characters to the right. Not Bibleworks. An ancient, neglected bug causes this maneuver to skip the first character. Let me just be clear: Bibleworks has a bug in selecting text. Selecting text, for crying out loud.

Do I want to pay $149.99 for the privilege of experiencing more of this kind of agony? No thanks. I'm stuck with Bibleworks 7 because I can't afford to switch to another program. But I'm not throwing good money after bad.

Regarding quality control, I offer one exhibit. Open up any biblical text in Bibleworks—English, Greek, Hebrew, doesn't matter. Place the mouse cursor just to the left of a character. Click the mouse button. Drag the mouse to the right. In every other program in the universe, this will select that character and all the characters to the right. Not Bibleworks. An ancient, neglected bug causes this maneuver to skip the first character. Let me just be clear: Bibleworks has a bug in selecting text. Selecting text, for crying out loud.

Huh. Well I can't speak as to whether this happens in BW7, but I don't see any issue like this in BW8 at all.

Regarding quality control, I offer one exhibit. Open up any biblical text in Bibleworks—English, Greek, Hebrew, doesn't matter. Place the mouse cursor just to the left of a character. Click the mouse button. Drag the mouse to the right. In every other program in the universe, this will select that character and all the characters to the right. Not Bibleworks. An ancient, neglected bug causes this maneuver to skip the first character. Let me just be clear: Bibleworks has a bug in selecting text. Selecting text, for crying out loud.

I run BibleWorks 7 under XP SP3 on my laptop and I don't have this problem. I also run it on this laptop with another harddrive that I swap in (these ThinkPads are nice) that has Windows Vista Ultimate on it and there's no problem there either. I use swappable hardrive trays on all of my desktops and BibleWorks 7 doesn't exhibit this problem under Windows 2000 Professional with SP4 and all of the current patches on those machines. I have another desktop that runs Vista Business, and guess what... no problem there either. Hmmmmm.

Bibleworks, I want you to know that you lost my trust with Bibleworks 7. It's going to take more than "New Features, New Databases, and New Version!" to win it back. It's going to take a whole new approach to usability and quality control.

Regarding usability, I have just this advice. Play with Accordance. Find out why people love it. Emulate. Keep your crazy command-line based interface for users who like it, but offer something easier and sweeter on top. Oh, and by the way, if I delete the logic operator at the beginning of the line, don't put up a modal dialog box asking me what I want to do. If you don't know why that's bad interface design, welcome to the 1990's.

Regarding quality control, I offer one exhibit. Open up any biblical text in Bibleworks—English, Greek, Hebrew, doesn't matter. Place the mouse cursor just to the left of a character. Click the mouse button. Drag the mouse to the right. In every other program in the universe, this will select that character and all the characters to the right. Not Bibleworks. An ancient, neglected bug causes this maneuver to skip the first character. Let me just be clear: Bibleworks has a bug in selecting text. Selecting text, for crying out loud.

Do I want to pay $149.99 for the privilege of experiencing more of this kind of agony? No thanks. I'm stuck with Bibleworks 7 because I can't afford to switch to another program. But I'm not throwing good money after bad.

BTW, I wanted to welcome you to the forum as the newest member. If all of these issues were such a sore spot with you, why didn't you drop by sooner?

If all of these issues were such a sore spot with you, why didn't you drop by sooner?

When I started using BW7 three years ago, I kept a log of the bugs I encountered, posted them to the forums, and began sending reports directly to Bibleworks. They replied graciously, pointed me to updates, and assured me they were working on the bugs they didn't already have fixes for. A few bugs got fixed. Many, many, many didn't. Eventually I gave up. But as I mentioned before, I'm still using Bibleworks. No choice.

So I do understand the spirit of your reply, but I did drop by sooner.

As for an earlier reply, I confess I haven't tried BW7 on Vista. I've used it on four separate computers with various versions of XP. It may be that not everyone experiences this bug. But it can't be too unusual because it has happened for me over many versions and several installations.

Sorry

Originally Posted by DimBimbleby

Bibleworks, I want you to know that you lost my trust with Bibleworks 7.

I guess the number one rule in tech support is not to respond to angry customers in kind. I can say that I did a lot of the programming in BibleWorks and I do not have the problem you describe. I can also say that we have tens of thousands of happy customers and that I have never talked to anyone who used BibleWorks on a daily basis who did not love that pesky command line. It is optimized for speed and minimization of keystrokes. A couple of versions back we offered a more user friendly approach as an alternative. No one liked it except people that used the program rarely if at all. The command line, believe it or not, is the result of 17 years of trying alternatives and always coming back to what works best for people who use the program as a daily companion. I like the interface. If I didn't, I would change it. An awful lot of people agree. So I think you are being rather unfair. It it were a private e-mail I wouldn't respond at all. In a public forum though some response is worthwhile. The Bible says a man's good name should be defended. That applies to companies as well. With regard to the highlighting error, if you reported it to tech support, it never made it to me. I would recommend venting your anger there before venting it publicly for all sto see, just as a matter of common courtesy. You might actually get a resolution of the problem. It happens. I can honestly say that this problem has never been reported before. If it had reached me with concrete reproducible examples, it would be fixed.

I am sorry that you feel the way you do. Accordance is a good product. I know Roy and he is a good guy. If you purchased BibleWorks 7 directly from us contact tech support and we'll work out a refund of your purchase price, as an exception to our normal 30 day policy. Money is tight for us, as it is for all our users, but we don't want money from someone who thinks they've been cheated, even if we feel they are clearly wrong.

I've been using BW7 since it came out and I've never had a problem with what you're talking about (neither one of them). I think the command line is genius. A lot of things set Bibleworks apart from their competition, and for you not to recognize that is confusing. If you purchased Accordance and then added on everything that Bibleworks offers in their base package, you would be paying well over $1,000, but for Bibleworks you get it for a mere $350. This cannot be matched, anywhere, period. Once you get used to the search feature, they are a piece of cake.

The only thing you're going to get with Accordance (or Logos) that you don't get with BW is more of an electronic library (basically more books and references). However, this goes against the BW philosophy, one that many (if not most) tend to completely agree with. Why spend all kinds of money on books to read electronically when you're not guaranteed you will have them forever like hard-copy books? Also, it's just much easier to read in hard-copy.

The only thing I'd like to see BW do is offer some type of standard dictionary as an add-on module that is tagged to the text (the New Interpreters Dictionary of the Bible would be sweet, as well as ABD or the IVP sets), as well as one or two more optional word dictionaries (NIDOTTE & NIDNTT). Reason being b/c these aren't books you read straight through and are just for reference (unlike commentaries, journals, or other books), which I think BW is built for. However, I don't even think they will do this b/c they like to keep the add-on modules at a minimum just because of their philosophy for electronic works (reference or not). Maybe my dreams will come true one day though

On another note, it's really low of you to do this on a public forum on the day they release their latest version. It's actually quite sad and it causes me to question your character and intent. I think BW does not need to defend itself though. Thousands of happy customers is their evidence for a superb product.

Do I want to pay $149.99 for the privilege of experiencing more of this kind of agony? No thanks. I'm stuck with Bibleworks 7 because I can't afford to switch to another program. But I'm not throwing good money after bad.

Dimbimbleby, I do not work for BibleWorks. I think your comment overstates an issue that could have been easily resolved with one of the best customer support teams in the software business. Why don't you take them up on the refund that you should not be entitled to, as I will try and make up for it with my order and recommending the upgrade to many others. This is a great team of people that works for BibleWorks, which is why I will always recommend them to those interested in deeper biblical studies. While no software is perfect, this company always strives to be responsive to their customers and get it right. You are wrong in your analysis and strongly worded complaint.

On another note, it's really low of you to do this on a public forum on the day they release their latest version. It's actually quite sad and it causes me to question your character and intent. I think BW does not need to defend itself though. Thousands of happy customers is their evidence for a superb product.